SPCR

This is the AGP card in question: https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/AH3450HTP256M/

I’m not asking about thermal problems. I mean problems that may arise from the mobo/bios discovering the fan has been disconnected from the graphics card, and therefore refusing to boot, or constant warnings, etc.

Mobo is an ASUS A8V Deluxe: http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?S ... luxe&os=17

Regarding thermal issues: Apparently it’s a very low wattage card, and I’m trying to find out if there’s a sizeable heatsink lurking under that black cowling, to make passive possible. I don’t do gaming.

Don't know if this old card has any protection circuitry. Sometimes it's faster to run an experiment and see what happens. Here's a review of the passive version Sapphire made. You can get a feel for the size of the heatsink they used to cool this 25W card to 75C under heavy load.

It really depends on the card. I've had newer cards that work fine with their fans disconnected. I would suspect that such an old and low end card wouldn't care and there were stock fanless versions of the 3450. Try it and see.

Sooty wrote:I mean problems that may arise from the mobo/bios discovering the fan has been disconnected from the graphics card, and therefore refusing to boot, or constant warnings, etc.

All graphics cards that I've ever used will start OK without a fan. If you don't do any gaming at all it is possible it might run passively as is. If you have a stash of old heatsinks lying around then I would take a Socket A, 370, 478 or similar heatsink and drill a few holes in it. Then screw it on in place of the stock heatsink. I've done this quite a number of times.

Looking at the image linked I can only see two wires to the fan which implies no fan speed monitoring so very likely the card won't 'know' the fan is disconnected. It may not even have thermal speed control on that fan either. I suspect there won't be much of a heatsink under the shroud, but it might be enough for non-3D use.
Seb